Alfresco and BPM Shakeout for PLM?

Just few days ago, I mentioned Alfresco in this list of the companies that potentially can challenge enterprise software vendors in their nirvana. The following article caught my attention – Alfresco is coming with open source BPM implementation based on BPMN notation. Tools is going to be available under Apache license.

Here is the short quote:

By choosing to develop a technology Business Process Management (BPM) Open Source Alfresco will shake the market for managing business processes. The enterprise content management has indeed become the major partner in a team that develops the project activity, which uses the BPMN 2.0 of the Object Management Group (OMG).

This project “Activity” under the Apache License to replace the LGPL Alfresco currently uses for its Enterprise Edition – itself an evolution of the GPL completed this year. The company, which has experimented with long talks and passage Apache had been forced by Hibernate for access to databases and to JBPM workflow. To assist in the development, Alfresco has even poached Tom Baeyens, founder of the project architect JBoss jBPM, Red Hat, to entrust the direction of development of the party workflow. “The workflow was not our core competency,” said John Newton, co-founder of Alfresco. “But Tom Baeyens is eminently qualified for that. ”

So, what is my take? Content Management Systems are not in the business of core PDM/PLM. However, combined with Open Source offering and including some BPMN-based business process capabilities, they can provide a barrier on the extended growth in enterprise organization. Just my opinion.

An interesting post was published by Luna-Tech research about the Business Process Management redefinition. Only few years ago, PLM was very focused about Collaborative Business Processes. These days I see PLM and Business Processes are not going very often together. My take is that PLM learned BPM implementation lessons. It…

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